Thinking in Chinese

The point here is, changye: You are using them.

I am proud of my etymology dictionaries

I bought at secondhand bookstores in Japan……!!

I'm proud to be a changye fan!

Henning, I agree. We are most fortunate to have posters like changye and yourself inspiring and guiding us along. Are you familiar with T.K. Ann's - Cracking the Chinese Puzzles? It's amazing stuff and I think it would be right up your alley.

Hi goulniky,

A supplement to my above posting. I have found the terms “形声兼会意字” and “会意兼形声字” on the Chinese Internet. It seems that classifying Chinese characters just based on 六书 (six writings) has been becoming somewhat “impractical” or "imprecise".

@changye:

That post was once again pure gold - thank you!

@Cpod Team:

Can't you hire changye to write a regular column?

Something like "Changye's etymology corner"?

I just can't get enough of that kind of in-depth background info.

Hi goulniky,

I am sorry for the late reply (I have just noticed your above comment this evening), and thank you for your opinion about “Chinese ideogram”. And I am afraid that I cannot agree with your claim “most Chinese characters are NOT ideograms”. In my opinion, basically most 汉字 are still 表意字 (ideograms).

It is said that more than 90% of Chinese characters are 形声字, or phono-semantic compound characters, which consist of 声符 (声旁, the phonetic element) and 义符 (形旁, the semantic element). In general, 声符 is regarded as a radical which only represents a sound, but actually NOT.

Especially after the 18th century (in the era of Qing dynasty) several famous Chinese scholars, such as 段玉裁 and 章炳麟, began to advocate a theory which insisted that 声符 (the phonetic element) also implies the meaning of a Chinese character. In short, so-called 声符 also plays the same role as 义符.

Let me take the characters “请”, “清”, “晴”, “精”, “鲭”, and “睛” as examples. Those characters are all 形声字 (phono-semantic), and their 声符 (phonetic element) is “青”. But actually “青” also implies the meanings “clear” or “blue” in those characters. e.g. “请” (request) connotes “to ask someone’s favor with clear mind”.

Other examples. Both “江” and “河” mean “river” in Chinese, and they meant “长江” and “黄河” respectively in ancient China. Their phonetic elements are “工” and “可”. But even those 声符 imply some significant meanings. “工” originally meant “pierce through”, and “可” implied “twists and turns” in ancient Chinese.

“长江” pierces through Chinese continent (from west to east), and “黄河” has been known for its meandering path since a few thousand years ago. As observed above, ancient Chinese people made every effort to select right radicals not only phonetically but also semantically when they invented new Chinese characters.

Some scholars say there aren’t many “pure” 形声字 in Chinese characters, which means so-called “声符” of most 形声字 are, more or less, ideograms, therefore you can say most Chinese characters are ideograms. Ancient people selected 声符 basically based on both sounds and meanings, which I think is very natural and rational.

I'm wondering, and I'm gusesing so, if on SpanishPod if on the discussion boards, even in the more elementary levels, people are more likely to converse in the Spanish they know compared to how much we converse in the Chinese we know... due to how different typing characters are to typing Englisha and Spanish. I've never been on SpanishPod, but I assume so.

t I think swear words are, perhaps, more attuned to a specific culture than any other. For example if you go to an obnoxious drunk in China and say, 你是个母狗的儿子... he'd probably just figure you'd had enough. Likewise if you called somebody a "Turtle Egg" in English... yeah.

Henning's example above is an excellent example. References to bodily functions are common in Chinese, but considered mildly impolite in English.

Ahh ok.. I thought it was kind of odd to find it in there as "examples" of how to use the bian4 character. Sorry I am at work and have no access to Chinese character sets here.. very annoying.. :( I'll definitely look up the shi1 character in my book and check it out though! :)

oops, ...大多数的汉字...

changye哥，你说的‘Chinese characters are ideograms’其实不对，你是个学者所以，很抱歉纠正你:-) 其实，大多数的汉子不是ideograms，反而是ideo-phonograms 形声字(xíng-shēngzì)，有两个部分，一个是radical 部首(bùshǒu)，另一个是semantic 形旁。那个上下文没有区别，但ideograms 表意字 (biǎoyìzì) 比较少，比如‘人’、‘大’、‘口’什么的。

light487,

小便 and 大便 are not considered offensive and they are definately not swearwords - it would be as if you swear with "No. 2!".

It is furthermore rather common to openly discuss metabolic issues in China. Nothing special there to point out how much positive impact that big meal yesterday had on your succeeding bathroom sessions. Even in front of strangers.

If you want real swear-word-characters: look out for the ones with the corpse-radical 尸 (shī). There is also one which ingeniously combines "flesh" and "enter". Be aware though, those are indeed taboo.

....which, for the record, he said for a second time on today's 請問。I knew he liked this word!

Light487, I was more offended when Clay said bum!

我的意思是，spaces 是个简单的方法对于分别词语。

light487 , one reason alphabetic languages need spaces is because that is an easy way to separate them, unlike Chinese where all hanzi occupy a rectangle of the same size. To try an analogy, Chinese is like positional arithmetic (decimal numbers), other languages are more like Roman numerals 罗马数字 (Luómǎ shùzì).

那个比喻 (bǐyù) analogy 好像一点奇怪，你觉得吗?

I came across my first real swear word in my Chinese character dictionary today! :) I was basically skipping through all the characters, making notes of all the characters that matter to me at the moment. It's surprising how few there are that are really important at the moment.

Many of the characters help explain the important ones and some of course are just particles and radicals, and therefore meaningless by themselves but just as important in the end. I just mean the words I know.. like 　好　有　我　他　etc etc.

Then I came across

便　ｗｈｉｃｈ　ｂｙ　ｉｔｓｅｌｆ　ｉｓ　ｒａｔｈｅｒ　ｈａｒｍｌｅｓｓ，　ｈｏｗｅｖｅｒ　ｗｈｅｎ　ｉｔ　ｉｓ　ｐａｒｔｎｅｒｅｄ　ｗｉｔｈ　小　ｏｒ　大　，　ｔｈｅｎ　ｉｔ　ｓｕｄｄｅｎｌｙ　ｂｅｃｏｍｅｓ　ｒｕｄｅ．　：）　Ｎｏｒｍａｌｌｙ　Ｉ　ｄｏｎ＇ｔ　ｓｗｅａｒ　ｓｏ　ｃａｓｕａｌｌｙ　ｂｕｔ　Ｉ　ａｍ　ｓｏ　ｅｘｃｉｔｅｄ　ｔｏ　ｆｉｎｄ　ａ　ｓｗｅａｒ　ｗｏｒｄ　ｔｈａｔ　Ｉ　ｃａｎ＇ｔ　ｒｅｓｉｓｔ．　Ｐｌｅａｓｅ　ｌｅｔ　ｍｅ　ｋｎｏｗ　ｉｆ　ｔｈｉｓ　ｏｆｆｅｎｄｓ？

小便

大便

：）

tvan, dreaming in Chinese 让我疯狂 (drives me nuts)! Unlike you I don't magically understand stuff, and end up not clear about what might have been a cool dream!

Thinking is Chinese can sometimes hurt my head, and sometimes the Chinese is quite simple. But then again I am a newbie.

I type out the pdf, english, Chinese, pinyin (half practice, half cause I want the traditional characters) and then add notes, such as 現在 (now). then I write out the Characters, and say the pinyin, and the english, (not in order) I use my reading and writing chinese to help with the writing.

I also try (not very well) to translate (really badly) some Chinese, I go on to Liberty Times (taiwan newspaper) find an article that's not to big and translate. Even though I do end up with what looks like nonsense, (I use a chinese-english dictonary) I do find groupings 省錢 save money 公益 public welfare. much better than learning how to ask how someone is ;->

Espela, 感谢你的耐心和你的中欧的地理教训。这个网站很少讨论中欧的事情。以前我好像戴有色眼镜来看斯洛文尼亚。以前就认为斯洛文尼亚是南斯拉夫早先的一部分。现在我知道也连很高明的中文学者。

tvan;

对，Slovenian就是我的母语。 说到土耳其语， 有可能的话肚皮舞不但有意栽肢体语言， 而且助于无意地学到一点儿土耳其语:)(跳舞的时候我平常在听一些很好听的土耳其的歌) 说不定我在那个喝醉的时候用了一首诗歌里的话。。:)) (这种耻辱发生了在土耳其的机场)

espela, 如果我喝酒喝到醉的话，我不知道我的国语进步了没有，可是一定讲得又多又大声。而且大概也会讲斯洛文尼亚话。 （我的词典没有斯洛文尼亚话。是不是 Slovenian? )

tvan,你说得对。没有阻碍的道路不会引向成功。我不知道我到底怎么这么敏感的。。。我真的应该改变一下。

做梦的时候我总是说斯洛文尼亚话。。我听说有些人认为做梦的过程是可以控制的。。

不幸的是，我对˝汉语梦˝没有直接感受， 可是喝醉的时候有一次我说了土耳其的语言；

非常奇怪因为我把它从来没有学过:)

Espela, 上学的时候，每一次我写文章有很多错误。好像更正比我写的字多了。我觉得是很好。没有更正怎么办进步？我的忠告是你只要有自信心，也别害怕别人的备注。如果有人批评你的留言，说实在的不是批评，是协助。

Anyone ever dream in Chinese? I sometimes do but, when the vocab gets too difficult, I either magically understand them, or the conversation switches to English.

我觉得你的意思就是跟那个俗话一样；小长不努力，老大徒伤悲。。。是真的，

西方逻辑了解还很肤浅可是每一个人都有自己的想法。 很多人以为他们的中文还是

不太好， 所以他们在留言怕用中文。。。(我也是一样的)

I think learning characters is essential, but it doesn´t help me much with thinking in chinese.. Whenever I try to express my PERSONAL opinion in chinese, there are many chinese people correcting me... Consequently I tend to loose all my interest because of all the accumulated frustrations... I mean some nationalities have patience; the keypoint is uderstanding, so they´re not correcting every single word you write or say in their language...but chinese enjoy doing that..

It´s hard to become confident in these conditions...any suggestions?:)

Hope you will give the "predictive" thing a chance... can take some getting used to, but being able to input four characters with just four keystrokes can be really convenient. Okay, that's it for the day, my CPOD day is over now! All the best.

In my one, it appears on the screen as you go with numbers next to it so you can pick which one you want quickly by pressing the number. If I change input styles to Classic input, I can type the pinyin with the tone number and it automatically puts in the most commonly used character. In the other two, it does the predictive thing with the floating option list.

Just experiment with hitting the "space" bar or the "return" bar, and see what options you get. In my ITABC system, the "space" bar throws up the options, the "return" key fixes the one you want (or else you just start typing the hanyu pinyin for the next character and the first choice will be selected automatically).

I can't speak for the non-Mac systems, but I think you may not need to key in the tones (most of the time) if the predictive function in your system is a good one. All the best.

Good luck, light487! Try keying in some "common" phrases using only the first letter of each character -- eg. mm, bb, zg , etc -- to get a feel for how the "predictive" function for your chosen input system works.

When I type xqs" in IT-ABC, I get 星期四 as first choice, 星期三 as the second choice. One is xin1qi1si4 (Thu), the other is xin1qi1san1 (Wed). Nice.

ni3 - ABC

伱

ni3 - Natural

你

ni3 - Classic

你

For some reason the first method of input ended up with a different character output. I found that this is already built into Windows Vista and is actually quite simple to setup if you know where to look. :)

P/s: Even if you go for 克, quite a few of the Chinese people you meet would probably think of "ke4" at the same time, and they'll think it's really clever. Nice ice-breaker...

What keyboard overlay? No need lah. If you have a Mac, there are fonts built in to OSX. But you have to go into your "System Preferences" and make sure that Chinese is ticked. There are several options, the one which works for me is "ITABC" (=IT-abc). You type in the pinyin, use the bar and the up and down keys to find the exact character you want, and just hit (or start typing the next character) to get the one you want. I'm sure that Windows has a version of ITABC. Good thing about ITABC is that its "predictive" function is not bad. Eg. if you type "xjp", the first choice will be 新加破 (Singapore). Type “wmd" and you will be offered 我们的 (wo3mende). Etcetera. The only thing which took me a bit of time to figure out was that the hanyu pinyin "ü" with the two dots over it is keyed in as "v". With a little bit of practice, you can get a good feel as to how the predictive function's library is designed, and you will be typing as quickly as in English. Good luck!

Ahh.. So it's important to recognise that I am translit. my name and not acquiring a new Chinese name? I didn't really think of it that way.. coming from the western world where names don't really need to mean anything or have a lot of significance I didn't really think it would matter. However, considering the whole point of me making my name sound Chinese is to make it easier for people to understand me, you're probably right in writing it as 璐克 instead of 璐刻.

If I didn't care about it being easier to understand I would just say my name as Luke.. but I do care.. I just wish it was easier to pronounce Australian.. haha :)

----------------------------------

I assuming that the majority of the people here who are typing in Chinese characters (is there a special word for saying "Chinese characters", I am getting sick of typing it out in full hehe.. :)) are typing it using their keyboard.. whereas I am stuck having to look up a character on MDBG and pasting it in to the text every time I want to reference a character. What program do I need so I can just type the characters directly with my keyboard? I assume there would be one somewhere, and I assume that there would be a keyboard overlay to marry with it.

Hello Luke. I like it. It's clever, but not "clever-clever". My two-cents worth on this is that using the standard 克 (ke4) is not such a bad idea, either. Because it is the character Chinese people normally use to transliterate "k", so it will alert people to the fact that the whole thing is also a transliteration of "Luke", rather than a whole new name that you've acquired. It's up to you.

璐刻 - lu4 ke4

I just went through the lists of lu4 characters and found one that had a suitably dramatic meaning.. hehe.. and then found a matching ke4 character that would fit with the first character.. it may not be exactly the right way to put these two character together.. or even meaning what I think they mean.. but what name actually means what it is supposed to, to the person who it has been given?

璐刻 - Jade Carving (or Carved Jade, or To Be Carved in Jade) etc

Hi light487,

I’m sorry for the late reply. “土人” and “土著人” mean “aboriginal” or “aborigine”, and they have discriminatory connotations, therefore they are not appropriate to use when you are talking about local people.

Basically, Chinese is a very energy-saving language. You can express profound thoughts and convey much information with minimum number of words and characters. And the same goes for punctuation system.

Ancient Chinese people didn’t use punctuation marks and leave a space between words, which sometimes make it somewhat difficult even for modern scholars to interpret ancient Chinese literature precisely.

Fortunately, Chinese characters are ideograms, which enables you read Chinese relatively easily even without punctuation and spaces between words. I also think it's just a matter of familiarity, as tvan said.

On the other hand, it is actually rather difficult to read Chinese sentences that contain many proper nouns, such as names (people, places, books, etc) and loanwords. Some authors kindly underscore those words.

Just a supplement to

auntie68’s very clever explanation.

henning -- 不会吧 ！ The problem is my Chinese. My vocabulary really is limited. Not only that, the vocabulary gaps always seem to be where I least expect them to be! Also, written Chinese is also more "compact" (closer to 文言, in some ways).

Btw, I need to apologize to you, and to everybody else on this thread, for my horrible gaffes with "zhangyanlin".

btw, light487, your Chinese friends did a nice job with the characters for your name (璐刻).

The addition of the little 王 (wang2; "king") in the first character turns a very common word/sound -- i.e. 路 (lu4; road) into an elegant character which is rare enough in everyday Chinese that the Chinese you bump into will realize that it is being used as a surname. And they won't get all confused trying to put a syntactical value on the "路“. Although I didn't know the character, I didn't have any trouble guessing how to read it.

light487, if I understand your question, that's just the way Chinese is written. Insofar as comprehension goes, I think it's just a matter of familiarity.

Insofar as "why", I'm afraid you need to ask somebody about 3,000 years older than me, or 3,025 years older than the average person on this site.

Hello light487. Hmm. Chinese people don't seem to miss the spaces at all.

I'm no expert in grammar or linguistics, but I suspect that the Chinese language doesn't need spaces because particles like 了 (le), 的 (de), 地 (de), 得 (de, again!), 着 (zhe), 在 (zhai), and 好了 (hao3le) are markers separating the various elements of the sentence.

So these particles, which non-Chinese learners struggle with at first, are -- in effect -- like the spaces. You struggle at first because your mind hasn't learned to zero in one these syntactical cues. They're like road markings.

That's why you might find learning Chinese easier once you get a bit deeper into the characters. The spaces in hanyu pinyin are not natural, but I think they are needed because if -- eg. -- you can't tell one "de" from another (的，地，得), you would have difficulty telling where one word ended and another began.

Eg. 我们的老师是中国人。

womende laoshi shi zhongguoren.

For a Chinese speaker, the 的 and even the 是 mark different ideas in that example sentence. Even the 人 is a marker too, because somebody who is comfortable with the way Chinese works would naturally group the 中国 with the 人.

Chinese tends to form words compounds in certain patterns which are fairly regular: 美国， 中国，德国， 法国. That was: me3guo2, zhong1guo2, de2guo2, and fa3guo. And each of these compounds can be modified by simply adding a 人 (ren2) to it: 美国人，中国人，德国人，法国人 .

心 xin1 = heart.

I'm sure you can figure out 好心 (hao3xin1) and 黑心 (hei1xin1) if you see the Chinese characters.

Hope that's helpful to you in some way!

mirjam, I already have that but I prefer Hanzibar.

Sorry to ask again but my question wasn't answered the first time.

Whyarethewordsinchinesecharactersnotseparatedlike

theyarewhenbeingwritteninhanyupinyin,youcanseeby

thisexamplehowharditistoreadifeverythingisalltogether

withnospaces.

Translation:

Why are the words in chinese characters not separated

like they are when being written in hanyu pinyin, you can

see by this example how hard it is to read if everything is all together with no spaces.

Hi Bazza,

There's one great tool in internet you could download: "Chineseperapera-kun". It's a popup translation system and works exactly like the CPod popups in the dialogues. At least my life is much easier now. ;)

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3349

Well, did not mix up the threads after all, because zhangyanli's posts are indeed disappearing...

Oh, I might have mixed up the threads (with S.T. diaries) or somebody deleted that post already.

bazza, like most of zhangyanlin's posts, this is just a copied and pasted classical Chinese text. This one is called 《阿房宫赋》. (阿房宫 is a palace built by Qin Shi Huang).

Does zhangyanlin's paragraph above make sense? It doesn't to me or google.

Auntie68,

if you do not get my posts it might just as well because of typos, word order flaws, and incorrect choice of vocab

:(

谜语：

一个男人看着黄书过独木桥

（打一成语，四个字）

华人吗？有就猜猜，明天我告诉你们

Rich,是吗？就是吗？不喜欢看汉字还加入中文博克干吗？真是的，还是你有水准，人才啊

我也觉得我应该在中文播客上多写汉子. 其实我最喜欢汉子. 我开始学习中文的时候我第一学习的方面就是用电脑怎么打字. 然后我才开始学习每个字的意思是什么. 所以我不怕看汉子,可是习惯了平时写英文. 我羡慕Henning, Goulniky, Changye,等等怎么经常写中文. 我同意也相信如果我们不管能写多少字,应该试一试只用中文把思想写出来,能加强(reinforce)我们的中文.

大家,加油!!!

子于齐闻韶，三月不知肉味。let me translet simple Chinese

孔子在齐国听到了《韶》乐，三个月尝不出肉的滋味，他说，“想不到《韶》乐的美达到了这样迷人的地步。”

Then translet by English

Confucius could not taste meat in a long time when he had heard the music called Shao. He was deeply bewithed by it.

Its nearly 10pm on a Friday in Shanghai, I dont think anybody is going to be deleting these posts for a while!

真是对牛谈琴，我知心希望所有老外都学不成真正的汉语，可是聪明的我们将把英文世界的一切精华学透，那时可真是个期待的年代

Great. Everybody is out drinking (or having similar fun). Shame on you, CPOD. Enjoy.

Hello, Ken/ amber/ hank/ Clay/ Jenny Zhu/ LJJ, anybody?

Englishi is the dirtiest 语言in the world,just look,how simple in chinese,i really cannot understand why English is so popular,and i think it's hard to learn,but a lot of people say it's easy,so I just now get an answer,the Chinese are more clever than the people who say Englishi

骊山北构而西折，直走咸阳Lishan Moutain (a very beautiful mountain),whose position was in the North to the West,it gone through the city of Xianyang

It faced 150km,and everybody who lived in the city of Xianyang could not see the sun and the moon and the stars覆压三百余里，隔离天日

Six king were killed and the country gathered ,the trees of Mountain Shu were cut down,a huge palace which named APANG was built六王毕，四海一，蜀山兀，阿房出

プリイズ！

Do please translet. Every sentense. Please.

You can only find out how long English is

So much for this "community of practice" whatsit... I thank changye, the single brave soul who tried sincerely to break through somebody's fog of miseducation (and frankly unacceptable) crudeness.

Now let me translet one sentence by sentense

Ken Caroll and Hank, you are the "bosses" here, so I am addressing to YOU: If you are keeping quiet because you agree with the tone which this thread has taken, then shame on you.

I can't believe my own eyes! Not one single obscenity in all those Chinese characters!

六王毕，四海一，蜀山兀，阿房出。覆压三百余里，隔离天日。骊山北构而西折，直走咸阳。二川溶溶，流入宫墙。五步一楼，十步一阁；廊腰缦回，檐牙高啄；各抱地势，钩心斗角。盘盘焉，囷囷焉，蜂房水涡，矗不知其几千万落。长桥卧波，未云何龙？复道行空，不霁何虹？高低冥迷，不知西东。歌台暖响，春光融融；舞殿冷袖，风雨凄凄。一日之内，一宫之间，而气候不齐。

妃嫔媵嫱，王子皇孙，辞楼下殿，辇来于秦。朝歌夜弦，为秦宫人。明星荧荧，开妆镜也；绿云扰扰，梳晓鬟也；渭流涨腻，弃脂水也；烟斜雾横，焚椒兰也。雷霆乍惊，宫车过也；辘辘远听，杳不知其所之也。一肌一容，尽态极妍，缦立远视，而望幸焉；有不得见者三十六年。 燕赵之收藏，韩魏之经营，齐楚之精英，几世几年，剽掠其人，倚叠如山；一旦不能有，输来其间。鼎铛玉石，金块珠砾，弃掷逦迤，秦人视之，亦不甚惜。

嗟乎！一人之心，千万人之心也。秦爱纷奢，人亦念其家。奈何取之尽锱铢，用之如泥沙？使负栋之柱，多于南亩之农夫；架梁之椽，多于机上之工女；钉头磷磷，多于在庾之粟粒；瓦缝参差，多于周身之帛缕；直栏横槛，多于九土之城郭；管弦呕哑，多于市人之言语。使天下之人，不敢言而敢怒。独夫之心，日益骄固。戍卒叫，函谷举，楚人一炬，可怜焦土。

呜呼！灭六国者六国也，非秦也；族秦者秦也，非天下也。嗟夫！使六国各爱其人，则足以拒秦；使秦复爱六国之人，则递三世可至万世而为君，谁得而族灭也？秦人不暇自哀，而后人哀之；后人哀之而不鉴之，亦使后人而复哀后人也。

hi light487, please don't fret. It feels "off" because the "Chinese" which changye was trying to translate for us was a mixture of modern Chinese (ie the kind that flutters from your gf's lips! good for you!), and "classical Chinese", which is as different from modern Chinese as... say ... original lines of "Beowulf". Yup. You're doing fine.

Also.. changye:

然尔等皆非真实之华人，

But nobody is a native speaker,

I see the 人 "ren4" there meaning person.. but you are using 华 instead of 土 .. why is that? Sorry.. really stupid question I know..

Also.. why don't people separate the parts of the sentence like..

然 尔 等 皆 非 真实 之 华人

In pinyin, the words get separated.. but not in Chinese.. it makes it all the more confusing when there are no spaces.. :(

gounlniky, I really wish all you brave "chinese only" posters out there the very best that my poor English can manage. I'll have no hesitation posting in Chinese characters as soon as -- in the distant future, sadly -- I am a bit more fluent in classical Chinese. Until then, sadly, I think I'd rather not court "think you, bitch" remarks from people who are offended by people who dare to admit that they don't understand Chinese to read posts, let alone to post in Mandarin. And Clay/ Amber/ John/ Ken etc, definitely NO THANKS for not having one single person on the payroll to handle obscene posts on a Friday afternoon. Enjoy your weekend!

Do I read the Chinese posts backward? As in right to left? or are they written with the first "syllable" on the left, and the last syllable on the right?

Eg.

Ni hao ma = 你 好 吗

or would it be:

Ni hao ma = 吗 好 你

I just spent 45mins on the train to get home and read through the first 50 or 60 characters in my book. I can pick out about 5 or 6 characters accurately but am seeing many, many radicals within each of the characters on this page now. Before, they were all just meaningless symbols and even though I still don't understand them all, I feel slightly more confident that it is actually possible to learn to read Chinese. Though I can see it's going to take a long time.

NND,小美大叔，你们想理解真实的中国，除非等你的下辈子

Dear uncle changye, thank you so much for the translation. I guess the lesson for me is, steer clear of Chinese-language posts, because I simply can't understand them. Sorry for the trouble...

Yes， my parents are Chinese,so my文言文颇行，然口语弱逊

你学中文多久了？看起来好厉害哦！！呵呵呵佩服！

尔等 it means you,it's correct

Hi auntie68,

SOOOORY, again.

The last line should be revised as follows.

故所见非实

So I can find some misunderstandings in your stories.

Hi auntie68,

Sorry, correction.

然尔等皆 was correct.

Hi auntie68,

I am not so sure too, but let me help you anyway.

诸等皆谈火车旅程，

Everybody is talking about train tickets,

吾甚兴趣，

I am very interested,

然尔等皆非真实之华人，

But nobody is a native speaker,

故所见非实

So I cannot find any truth in your stories.

Wrong 然尔

Correct 然而

Now let's speak politely,as you hnow auntie68,I'm a native,but I born in Japan ,so my Chinese is not good,so is English,but I think it has a lots of the same words between Ch and Ja,文言很多in Japanese,oh,what i say?

Erm, goulniky/ clay/ amber/ john/ Ken/ anybody really -- what is this?

think you ,bitch

light487, I really do look forward to reading your posts each day because you seem to be *flying* with the Mandarin. It's pretty amazing. And an inspiration for people like me! Wish you all the best.

So i had to say that you write so much just because 诸等皆谈火车旅程，吾甚兴趣，然尔等皆非真实之华人，故所见非实",don't you think your heart is so small

I'm at the point where I hear a word or see it in pinyin, and then go and look it up in my new reading and writing book.. and study the radicals and relationships it has..

For example, the character for "bear" / xiong4 is made up of the "cocoon", "moon", "ladle" (there are two of these, one underneath the other) and "fire dots" radicals. My girl friend's nickname is xiao3 xiong4 (small/little bear)..

I can recognise these radicals without looking them up in the radicals guide.. but that is not to say that I recognise the entire character by itself or even within the context of a sentence. Then again.. I've only had the book for 2 days now.. :) So I shouldn't be too hard on myself.

Zhangyanlin, I know - just KNOW -- that I'm not ready to be posting in Mandarin when I can't even understand one thing about sentences like this:

"诸等皆谈火车旅程，吾甚兴趣，然尔等皆非真实之华人，故所见非实"

Please try to be understanding. When I read this, I thought it was 文言 and even spent a bit of time trying to read it in Cantonese to see if that was the trick. For me, the reality is that "living Chinese" is not easy to understand, although CPOD goes a very long way towards helping learners like me to improve our Mandarin comprehension. Writing it is a different matter; but only for me.

auntie68,.let me talk about you ,first i do not want to opologize,second,do you think you so noticed by me just write so many words?

Now let me show some interesting vocabulary in Chinese

1 一个巴掌拍不响

2 泥菩萨过江，自身难保

3猪八戒照镜子，里外不是人

4十八个水桶打水，七上八下，it means your heart很不安

5江山易改，本性难遗

6狗改不了吃屎，it means one's heart is hard to be changed

7狸猫换太子

８穷得叮当响

９富得流油

１０船到桥头自然直

１１水到渠成

P/s: I have a famously thick skin when it comes to learning other languages. When the need arose I always seemed to be able to forget any notions of "face" and just plunge into French or Italian or Thai because I just HAD TO communicate with somebody's mother or father-in-law or friend or zia or spouse who didn't speak any English.

It was always worth it, but I'm not sure that it is an approach which is worth it under all and any circumstances (eg. when I have the option of listening and learning and only speaking in the new language with people who are going to be comfortable correcting me).

zhangyanlin, I am so sorry, but I could not understand a single thing you wrote. Not even the gist of it. I'm assuming you are a native Chinese speaker, from the name (and the complexity of the vocabulary), and this sort of explains why people like me don''t feel ready to post in Chinese even though our receptive abilities can fairly be said to be quite "advanced".

Call me a coward, call me whatever, but I just know that I need at least 6 more months to get comfortable before I can feel reasonably confident that I will be able to contribute an "intelligible" post in Mandarin. That's just me. Sometimes I don't understand what goulniky or henning or mark are trying to convey when they write in Chinese. So I definitely need more time.

怎么这么多丑八戒呀，人才呢，有靓妹没啊

one pig 。

a pig's head就是指的一只猪头了，呵呵

那就跟我们说话吧~haha。现成的资源嘛

Does 一头猪 just mean 'one pig' or a pig's head?

BTW, rather than passive / active, I should have said consume / produce (réception / émission)

henning 说的对，changye 真的是我们的榜样，我一边佩服，一边羡慕他!

liqian1986 说的也有道理，但我开始这个讨论主要的标是我们中国外边住的学生，说中文的机会比较少的。对住在中国的老外比较简单，环境适合的很，这个博客上留言写英文很轻松!

don't know if this makes sense, but obviously the 'active' part of the model is no big deal if you live in China. If you don't, and your wife / partner isn't Chinese, this is more of a challenge.

所以，学习语言的最好方法就是到那个环境中去。Welcome to China!

changye,

I would give alot to come close to your "limited vocabulary and grammatical knowledge".

你是我们大家的榜样， 我们都佩服你。

I always try to think in Chinese when writing in the language, although it isn’t so easy for me. At the same time, I sometimes feel that this attitude enables me to write in Chinese a little more easily, not because I can skip translation process, but just because I cannot help but use words and expressions only within the realm of my limited vocabulary and grammatical knowledge.

两条毛巾，哈哈。中国的数量词很丰富的，一匹马，一条鱼，一头猪，一只羊~同样是动物，用词却不一样的

能不能给我两个毛巾？

只练习，哈哈。

土生土长:be born and brought up in one area

中国成语，呵呵

呵呵。我帮你们提高吧。我是土生土长的中国人，过来学英文的，大家加油吧！

mark, 虽然我是法国人，可是我经常用英文，从来没翻译从法语到英语，直接用英语想、写，我发现翻译起来很麻烦。现在写、说中文，我越来越用那个方法，语句结构直接用中文，不过空件[placeholder]更多，因为词汇更差，跟陆克文不一样。

Guolniky, my meaning was, my inner soundtrack is in English. So, I often find myself translating Chinese into English internally, or vise versa, and seldom manage to think exclusively in Chinese. I was wondering if others who learned Chinese as an adult had managed to get past this and think in Chinese when conversing in Chinese. Basicly, I was hoping for personal testimonials of this kind of success, and maybe some hints about how to get there.

I find it difficult to follow at the best of times when half the conversations are in Chinese characters.. especially when I am at work, like now, because at work they don't have the chinese character set installed :( Very frustrating when I am trying to expose myself to as much as I can.

I write comments basically in Chinese for upper intermediate, advanced, and media lesson forums, and in English for newbie, elementary, and intermediate ones. Of course, I don’t always stick to this principle. I sometimes post a comment in Chinese even for newbie forums, if it is necessary.

I think Gouliniky’s opinion on the importance of writing in Chinese, or active learning, is very right, but that doesn’t automatically mean poddies should try to post comments in Chinese as much as possible. I would like to remind you that a major purpose of forums is exchanging information.

I find that profound comments full of helpful linguistic tips are often written in English, and the same goes for excellent banters and jokes. On the other hand, you cannot expect to obtain much useful information exactly from conversations in Mandarin due to learners’ limited skills in Chinese.

Sorry, typo:

大家的意见都很有意思。我觉得用电脑写中文应该不是培養用中文来思考的最好的方法，因为写字的时候很多学生都会查词典，并花不少时间考虑哪个说法(或写法)是最合适的。

我认为经常跟中国人进行会话是一个比较好的方法。首先，会话速度比写字速度快多了，所以需要想得快一点，也没有机会考虑或查词典。其次，写字没有会话那么互动，如果你在会话中出错误，中国人可以立刻帮你改错。所以进行会话应该可以快点使学生培養用中文思考。

但是只用一个方法好像也不太好。所以最好尽量用写中文和跟中国人进行会话这两个方法。你们觉得呢？

大家的意见多很有意思。我觉得用电脑写中文应该不是培養用中文来思考的最好的方法，因为写字的时候很多学生都会查词典，并花不少时间考虑哪个说法(或写法)是最合适的。

我认为经常跟中国人进行会话是一个比较好的方法。首先，会话速度比写字速度快多了，所以需要想得快一点，也没有机会考虑或查词典。其次，写字没有会话那么互动，如果你在会话中出错误，中国人可以立刻帮你改错。所以进行会话应该可以快点使学生培養用中文思考。

但是只用一个方法好像也不太好。所以最好尽量用写中文和跟中国人进行会话这两个方法。你们觉得呢？

mark, 我像你一样，经常从英语翻译到中文，才可以用中文表示我的想法。我怕这个就是goulniky的观点，我们需要多写中文。多用中文写自己的看法，我们越来越会不用先想英语，后翻译到中文；我们会在脑子里马上想到中文，以后很方便地、很流利地用中文写去来我们的想法。

goulniky,

我想mark想表达的是我们在考虑问题的答案的时候都会先想到自己的母语，然后再转换为外语。

美英澳 : 美国、英国、澳洲

这个简称不知道合适或者新词。

mark,

我听不懂你的问题，但不知道你为什么要翻译。

无论是从英文到中文，或者从中文到英文，

跟中国人说话根本没有时间翻译起来 on the fly。

除了英文母语的美英澳的朋友意外，

我们说、写英语外语的学生都已经习惯了。

关于方便、快写的事，我怕没有别的办法进步。

对我来说些英文又快又方便,所以我很急的时候我用英文. 不过我有其它的问题. 谁能不在心里翻译重英文地用中文?

@light I recommend http://www.mdbg.net/? just type in the pinyin (even possible without the tones) and browse through the possible answers for the correct one

And the last sentence should have been 我没办法不这样做！

Aiya...my first sentence above should read 有两个原因。

gulniky and bbjt,

It is翻译起来 and吃起饭来.

The structure is 动词verb+起来

For example:跑起来 （跑run）

跳起来（跳jump）

笑起来（笑laugh）

打起来（打fight）

抱起来（抱hug）

有两个愿意我不想用中文留言：第一，因为我写错了很多词，还有我表达想法的方式很不流利，我每次留言都怕要影响同学们的学习，打扰他们的进步。第二，我当然不好意思给同学们看我写的那么多的错误！

我为什么还选坚持下去？因为我完全统一goulniky的看法；我想进步的话，没办法这样做。

Having said that, though, I also totally sympathize with those whose days are already full and don't have much extra free time (or energy) - just listening to C-pod and mastering the lessons is already exhausting in itself, continuing to use Chinese while posting may just be too much! That's one of the great things about C-pod; we can each choose to use it in the ways that best suit our individual goals and life circumstances.

bbjt, my mistake, 好像‘翻译’不会分裂，可能不是动宾合词 verb-object compound ?

Where do I get the characters from? Like for example, if I know the pinyin for something.. like my girlfriend's nickname xiao3 xiong2 (meaning: little bear) where do I:

1. find the corresponding characters? (ie. an online codex perhaps)

2. find the tool to write it with my keyboard??

其实，

吃起饭来 with google : 20 100 answers

吃饭起来 with google : 1 870 answers

翻起译来 with google : 0 answer

翻译起来 with google : 49 100 answers

bbjt, I think so, AB + 起来 => A 起 B 来, 比如 : 吃饭 => 吃起饭来

casie, changye, 你们专家和高级学生请帮助啦!

Goulniky,

Thank you for the clarification. Have put the quote under the name of Carla as Gad Elmaleh may not be well knowned out of France and Quebec.

翻起译来 Vs 翻译起来 (come up with a translation)

Is it really correct to blend 翻译 and 起来 ?

One problem is that discussing lessons in depth is not that easy in Chinese, even for upper intermediate and advanced learners. So I think user discussions in Chinese (various topics for all levels) might be more suitable than lesson discussions.

I believe that finding native speakers (via Skype/MSN/QQ etc. if necessary) and talking to them actively and frequently helps to achieve the goal of thinking in Chinese much faster.

Discussing with other Chinese learners in Chinese is nice, but has the inherent danger of reinforcing grammar/pronunciation mistakes. Especially among people at elementary and newbie levels.

wildyaks 说的对 - is right :

说 shuō talk

的 de (particle)

对 duì correct

light487, I know what you mean and I totally understand. I had that feeling at the beginning and a Chinese webpage still freaks me out.

I think goulniky speaks to the more advanced learners, and also is encouraging elementary and lower intermediate learners to start using the few characters they know. It helps to get into the habit at an early stage. And it is good to try to overcome the fear of characters as early as possible. What you are doing right now - just looking for familiar characters and guessing at their meaning - Is a good start.

Don't get intimidated by the learners who are more confident with characters. you will get there, as long as you don't shy away from them.

I understand what you mean.. I think the problem I have is that I don't even know the meaning of a single Chinese character, let alone an entire phrase. It would take me an hour to look up just one of the posts here, then a further hour to decipher the meaning.

Would I be a step closer to learning.. may be.. but would I be doing it the hard way?

I think this 大 is one of the numbers.. may be the number 3? and this 了 looks like a particle.. may be la or le? and possibly this 你 is ni?

I am guessing on all 3 counts there.. and with so many characters jammed into one tiny space, it overwhelms me and I tend to give up before I start.

bbjt, [法语] ‘La porte ouverte a toutes les fenetres ’像中文相声 (xiàngsheng n. cross-talk), 我没办法翻起译来

这样的 [英文] double entendre!

其实，不是法国总统新妻子称为C.B.S.说的，她只引用相声者 Gad Elmaleh的新语

大家加油啊！

Henning,你的中文已经很棒了，不要太有压力，我们大家都在见证你的进步呢！

Goulniky,

你给大家树立了一个很好的榜样，继续保持哦！

我对自己学英语的要求是“每天进步一点点”，尽力就好。

甜芳^_^

非 Verb 不可 fēi…bùkě : not (do) impossible = must (do)

Goulniky,

降低中文播客的重要性 ..."这是敞开大门，向所有窗子" (Carla B.S.). ;o)

对营销者来说，客观那个观念似乎没存在 : 事实是事实，不过最重要是主观的感觉。乐观的话，你非相信你的能力不可!

营销者 yíngxiāozhě marketeer

观念 guānniàn n. sense; concept; notion

似乎 sìhū adv. it seems

主观 zhǔguān subjectivity/ subjective

说道"红牛"(Red Bull)那个饮料，虽然咖啡因绿比咖啡低，可是内容还架别的因素，具体的我望了，不过就到很有效! 每当要开十多个小时的车(uh? 开车很长时间)，我总是喝。

喝了两杯咖啡心情就好了。 和了四杯带来了一个万能的感觉。 客观的来说水平还是一样差， 可是感觉根本不同。

;)

昨天两位美女来到办公室， 送给了大家"红牛"这个饮料 (推销活动)。 对我而言不好喝， 还有咖啡因量比我们的浓缩咖啡低， 不够。

谢谢，我明白了。

...

包括 (bāokuò) to include

谈话 tánhuà to talk

对方 duìfāng (the) other side/party

包括谈话的对方用‘咱们’(zánmen)，不包括谈话的对方用‘我们’

‘咱们’(zánmen) is used to include both the speaker and the person(s) spoken too, while 我们 (wǒmen) may refer to the speaker alone or together with the person or persons spoken to.

如: 我们朋友参加义务劳动，你要是么事儿，咱们一块儿去。不过说‘我们’也可以包括谈话的地方

e.g. We're going to take part in the obligatory labour tomorrow. If you're free, let's go together.

I guess what is meant by ' speaker alone' is speaker + other people not other present in the conversation.

goulnik,

可是。。。我都累了。

每天浪费那么多时间了学习中文， 然而一点进步也没有， 害得我想放弃。

我还是回家好好睡觉，说不定明天就好了。

So what's the difference between 我们 and 咱们?

ramble, 东拉西扯 (dōnglā-xīchě) 怎么样, according to Wenlin/根据文林, 这本词典的意思是 to ramble (of speech).

by-product -> 副产品 (fùchǎnpǐn)

exposure, 我没有办法翻译这个词语。

but sushan 说的对，he is right，a little Chinese is better than none，simple Chinese is ok, we don't need to use 成语, or complex sentences, 不要使用复杂的句子.

Voila. Oui, 写汉字太[花 huā]时间, but that time spent is not 浪费 (làngfèi) wasted.

Learning Chinese takes a lot of time *anyway*, besides, many of us don't have English as their mother tongue...

wildyaks, yes

I think ChinesePod should have a popup translation system like in the dialogues that works across the comments, that would save us having to include pinyin at lower levels as well.

咱们在Upper Intermediate and Advanced 用多一点汉子。 对我自己来说我有时候有一点懒， 所以用汉子写下来我的意义比较少。 但我和goulniky同意， 写中文让我考虑多一点中文的语法和说法。

(对不起大家， 我不太喜欢用拼音写中文.)

不好意思。

你为什么把这个你为什么把这个帖子写成英文?

怎么把"rambling"， "by-product", "exposure" 什么之类的翻译出来?

写汉字太化时间呗。

看吧。 一写中文就打错了。

你为什么把这个贴字写成英文?

怎么把"rambling"， "by-product", "exposure" 什么之类的翻译出来?

写汉字太化时间呗。

很好的建议. 我的新规: 用多一点中文做评论

hĕnhăo de jiànyì。 wŏ de xīn guī： yòng duō yīdiăn zhōngwén zuò pínglùn

不过英文评论给我们很价值的事:

bùguò、 yīngwén pínglùn gĕi wŏmen hĕn jiàzhí de shì –

(switching back, sorry)

insight and personality that doesn't come through with Chinese comments. (Similar to the English banter.) Would not want to see them disappear entirely.

I think you're absolutely right goulniky - learning characters and writing Chinese is extremely beneficial to speaking. But I also know that users will join in on the conversations in levels that they are nowhere near.

I am "guilty" of that myself - the Detroit lesson is a perfect example. I'm nowhere near Intermediate level, but there were some interesting comments that I wanted to join in on.

I do often learn a lot from going into the upper level conversations, but at the same time, I'm not able to form complete thoughts in Chinese (mostly due to lack of grammar). I can form simple sentences, but not complete thoughts. I think to write in half Chinese, half English would be annoying to most people.

Basically what I'm saying is that users, who are not able to read/write well (or at all), should not be restricted from joining the conversations in upper level lessons. That would only stunt our growth.

不会写汉子的话，写汉语拼音还行了。

Bù huì xiě hànzi dehuà，Hànyǔ Pīnyīn hái xíng le.

我喜欢你的思想。我觉得咱门比较舒服谈谈在英语但是你对了。如果咱们写汉字，咱门提高更快。